Today, Explained - Unconventional (Part II)

Episode Date: August 28, 2020

The GOP proved that laws were made to be broken at its 2020 convention. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. The Republican National Convention this week did not look or sound much like the Democratic National Convention of last week. No Bruce Springsteen, some Leonard Cohen, mostly patriotic scoring that sounded like it was lifted from Saving Private Ryan.

It wasn't Zoom or video conference heavy. Instead, there were lots of people getting together in person. But beyond the different sound or look, this convention at times felt like it was set on a different planet. There were lies so blatant you had to laugh. And his deep understanding of our system of government and the strength of American values is the man we can trust to preserve and even improve our way of life.

Comparison so audacious you had to howl? Here at Abraham Lincoln's boyhood home, a young man would grow up to become the first Republican president of the United States. And today, another Republican president is fighting to preserve that same noble legacy of freedom. And it felt like every fourth human in existence was a Trump. Like, there were so many Trumps on stage, you could take one home with you as a party favor. There was Tiffany, Eric, Donald Jr., Melania, Ivanka, Ronaldo, Kareem, Luciana. And Thursday night, they were all on stage on the South Lawn of the White House. A fair share of this convention was filmed at 1600 Pennsylvania, which hasn't been done in modern history and is very much illegal.

But we'll get to all that soon enough with Ella Nilsson, who is once again watching it for Vox. Ella, where do we begin? Like, last week you predicted this could be a bit of a mess. Did it live up to your expectations? Not entirely. I mean, I had heard from some sources that logistically there were still a lot of things kind of falling into place at the last minute. A lot of the speaking got moved to Washington, D.C. at the last minute rather than Charlotte, North Carolina, where some of the kind of business of the convention happened. But as far as Republicans being on message and a cohesive message coming out of the RNC, they definitely pulled that off. Right. And it felt like last week we got, you know, Obama saying, this is a strange convention because these are strange times. This isn't normal because

life isn't normal right now. But the Republican message seemed to be like, life is kind of normal right now. And they kind of had a more normal convention. There was less of an ambition to make a sort of Zoom-heavy thing. And because of that, there were actually fewer production snags. It kind of went a little smoother, I thought. Yeah, I mean, it was sort of the traditional speaker coming on after speaker. A few people Zoomed in. But for the most part,

people kind of streamed in and out of the Andrew Mellon auditorium, you know, this beautiful kind of concert hall in Washington, D.C. There were a lot of American flags. And then for the grand finale, Ivanka Trump and President Donald Trump spoke from the White House lawn. And there was a huge finale of fireworks spelling out Trump 2020 over the Washington Monument. Right. I could hear it from my spot in D.C. It was like midnight. I felt bad for all the parents with small children.

And everybody who has dogs. Oh, right, the dogs, yeah. How could I forget? And speaking of things that upset the dogs, there was a very loud speech on night one from Donald Trump Jr.'s girlfriend that may have caused some canine conniptions. Yes. So night one featured, you know, a lot of speakers, including Kimberly Guilfoyle with a very loud speech. Ladies and gentlemen, leaders and fighters for freedom and liberty and the American dream. The best is yet to come. She she I think people were comparing that speech to Dwight Schrute's speech from the office.

Salesmen of Northeastern Pennsylvania, I ask you once more rise and be worthy of this historical hour. They want to steal your liberty, your freedom. They want to control what you see and think and believe so that they can control how you live. The emphasis there was the economy has been good under President Trump. There wasn't really much mention of coronavirus. But the big theme over and over again that started out on Monday night and really continued throughout the rest of the four nights was that President Trump is going to bring back law and order to a lawless nation. It felt like night one was sort of the pilot for the rest of the RNC, and it really got underway on night two, when the president sort of settled into a series of TV stunts. Yeah, I mean, the other big theme out of this convention was the White House was being used again and again, essentially as a political prop.

So night two, Trump did two things that generated a lot of headlines that weren't necessarily positive. One, he did a presidential pardoning ceremony at the White House. So now I'd like to invite John's wife, Jamie, to join us as I grant John, I'm not sure you know this, a full pardon.

And the second thing that he did was a naturalization ceremony. You followed the rules, you obeyed the laws, you learned your history, embraced our values, and proved yourselves to be men and women of the highest integrity. So one of the things that we learned after was that one of the participants of the naturalization ceremony, like, didn't even know that it was being televised and broadcast for the purposes of the RNC. So, I mean, there was literally, like, people who were participating who were becoming citizens were essentially used as political props without their knowledge or consent. And as I watched that, I wondered, has this ever happened before on live TV? Yeah, this is an unprecedented thing, the use of the White House. And it's worth noting, you know, the thing that we're talking about being violated here

is the Hatch Act, which basically prohibits federal employees from engaging in overtly political activities like a party convention. So the issue here isn't so much that Trump is doing it himself because the president sort of has immunity from this stuff, but there were members of his administration, like a member of the Department of Homeland Security who was participating in this naturalization ceremony, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who gave a speech from Jerusalem later. The issue here being that we, the taxpayers, pay for these employees to do work, and instead they're doing work to get someone elected. It's a very overtly political work that they

were engaging in this week. Right. This is literally like the Republican Party's convention happening in a space that technically is supposed to be for voters by bringing out every woman Donald Trump had ever been nice to to portray him as some kind of arch-feminist. Yeah, grab him by the pussy, Donald Trump is a pussy hat wearing feminist. And they sort of did the same thing with Black voters, right? In between segments where Donald Trump would call COVID the China virus, they brought out a few Black women and a lot of Black men, many of whom seem to be former athletes, to say Donald Trump is not racist. Yeah, I mean, this was, I think, one of the big points of the convention that kind of

illustrates the Trump campaign's larger strategy in 2020. Last night, we heard from a speaker who works in the White House as one of the president's, you know, deputy assistants. Every issue important to Black communities has been a priority for him. Prison reform, rebuilding broken families, bringing jobs back to America. Jobs in Cleveland, jobs in Detroit, jobs in Milwaukee. The larger picture here is that Black Americans typically vote Democratic. The vast majority of them vote Democratic. That's a pretty overt campaign strategy to sort of chip away at Biden's margins with Black voters. Okay, let's talk heavy hitters here.

Night three, Mike Pence. Night four, Donald Trump. Pence's speech was pretty forgettable, save that killer last line. And with President Donald Trump in the White House for four more years, and with God's help, we will make America great again. Again. Yeah, I mean, nothing says you've made America great like needing to do it again. And then the main event, President Trump, Thursday night, he opened this thing with lies. Now, if you want to really drive him crazy, you say 12 more years.

12 more years! 12 more years! 12 more years! Because we caught them doing some really bad things in 2016. Let's see what happens. His closing speech was very long. How many lies do you think he snuck into that? I don't know. How many lies did CNN's Daniel Dale catch? Was it double digits? I'm guessing double digits. Trump said Joe Biden is, quote,

talking about taking down the voter wall. The veteran's choice law. Barack Obama signed that into law in 2014. Trump signed a 2018 law that any president since Abraham Lincoln. That is ludicrous. Trump denounced so-called cancel culture as like an insidious left-wing thing. He, Donald J. Trump, has tried to get dozens of people and entities canceled, fired, boycotted,

including literally last week, Goodyear. What Trump was trying to do over and over again and really trying to hit home last night was like the economy was so great under him until coronavirus happened. We passed record-setting tax and regulation cuts at a rate nobody had ever seen before. Within three short years, we built the strongest economy in the history of the world. And without taking much of the responsibility

for making coronavirus better, because we have essentially seen the federal government largely abdicate its responsibility in this front. Or owning up to the fact that, like, the United States did the worst job in the world of handling this virus. Right. I mean, we are not in any ways out of the woods on coronavirus, but the RNC made it seem like we washed our hands of that. That's done. We defeated it.

It's all good. We're about to get our economy back on track. So it was very much like we were living in the future, essentially. And unlike Joe Biden, who didn't mention Donald Trump by name once in his speech last week, Donald Trump found what? Like dozens upon dozens of opportunities to talk directly about Joe Biden in his feature It's interesting to me. I mean, a few months ago, I would have put money down on, you know, the fact that the vast majority of any Trump speech at the RNC

would have been about, like, Hunter Biden and Burisma and Ukraine. And that, like, barely came up. And instead, it was... The radical left will defund police departments all across America. They will pass federal legislation to reduce law enforcement nationwide. They will make every city look like Democrat run Portland, Oregon. No one will be safe in Biden's America. And, you know, you call 9-1-1 and there is no operator there to pick up the phone because Joe Biden has defunded the police.

And we should let people know that Joe Biden does not want to defund the police. Yes, Joe Biden does not want to defund the police. That is absolutely not part of his, you know, platform or what he wants to do. But that didn't stop like speaker after speaker after speaker at the RNC from telling you that he does. Yeah, absolutely. And there is a definite strategy here. I mean, Donald Trump and his campaign team know that the election is going to largely be decided in America's suburbs. These are suburbs, you know, that president after president for years has tried to appeal to. And I think that Trump is sort of going for kind of the

whitewash version of the suburbs, the like white soccer mom who is afraid of, you know, violence in her community, et cetera, et cetera. I think it's worth noting that the suburbs are a much more diverse place than that. But it is definitely, you know, swing voters and independent voters are going to be the ones that decide the 2020 election. We saw them swing hard for Democrats in 2018. Trump is terrified that they're going to do the same thing in 2020 with Biden at the top of the ticket. And so even though, you know, Biden is a moderate politician who actually over the course of his Senate career, oversaw a fairly draconian crime bill. They are going to paint him as the head of the new socialist regime that is going to defund the police and make your family less safe

and take away all of your freedoms as an American. That's the message. Well, Ella, it's been an experience. It has. We just have to do debates now. Can't wait. We'll talk soon then. Okay.

Bye, Sean. can't wait we'll talk soon then okay bye Sean support for today explained comes from ramp ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you

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Terms and conditions apply. Ezra Klein, you are a policy guy. What policy plans for Donald Trump's next four years did you glean from the RNC this week? We're going to make America great again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. And it is the peculiar way in which Donald Trump, as the incumbent president of the United States, is still trying to run as if he is the challenger who has no power, right? He is saying that if you elect Donald Trump, we're going to get the economy back. If you elect Donald Trump, we're going to get coronavirus under control. If you elect Donald Trump, the Biden administration isn't going to let America collapse into chaos, as you're seeing in many cities as protests take hold. And you might ask, well, Donald Trump is president now. So why is all that happening? And there was no answer for that.

But is that the smartest strategy for, you know, Teflon Don to take here? Nothing seems to stick to him, right? I mean, 180,000, 200,000 Americans potentially have died from this coronavirus. And how has it affected his polls with his base? They're like exactly the same, right? So I think you know the term Teflon Don is triggering to me. And so I'm upset that you used it. I think that was unfair after I was up so late last night. What Donald Trump is, is stable.

He's not Teflon. I want to be really clear about this. When you are polling at 42%, you're not Teflon. He was polling at roughly 42% when the economy is good. He's polling at 42% when the economy is terrible. He was polling at 42% before coronavirus. He's polling at 42% after it. The core of the country that has decided they like him, they like him and nothing's changing

their mind. Yeah. And then the majority of the country, a big majority that has decided they don't, they don't like him and nothing's changing their mind. He is stuck in this very narrow range. And it's, you know, it's not a range where it is impossible to imagine him winning the election, but it isn't where you want to be as the incumbent, right? You'd prefer to be at 54%, not 42%.

I mean, I wonder, more than any convention in recent memory, it really felt like both the Democrats and the Republicans were running these sort of conventions of culture to me. The Democrats were saying, you know, we choose a culture of decency, a culture where you don't have to worry about what your president's doing all the time and you can get back to your life. And Donald Trump appears to be running on this sort of, you know, culture of fear, of watch out for what Joe Biden might do, even though those things are happening right now on the streets in Kenosha, and telling people that, you know,

we have to put an end to this cancel culture that Donald Trump himself is a part of. I mean, did you feel that way, that they're just trying to speak to two different visions of what American culture could become? These were conventions about America, about who controls the American narrative and who belongs in the definition of the patriot. I think if you look at not just the protests, but what is downstream from them too, right? This idea of anti-racism, that America is founded on white supremacy, that there are things we must atone for, a look at ourselves we have to do. If you look at the NBA players

ceasing play, what is happening there is people who often, for almost all of American history, did not have the power to say, this is what is happening to us. You have to pay attention, you have to listen, And you have to change. Have the power to say that. As they've developed more power, as the political coalitions have changed, the Democratic Party's become not 100%, but more and more a vehicle for that.

And so much of the two conventions were about how you felt about that future. Donald Trump's version of that future, I mean, make America great again, is just 100% roll it back, stop it from happening. You're not going to listen to these people. You're not going to hear that America is a racist country. You're not going to hear that we have anything to apologize for. We are not going to change who has power and who gets listened to and who gets to shape and set our national identity and narrative. And Joe Biden's convention

was very much the opposite. It was saying, that is America. Very explicitly in the Obama and Biden speeches, it was forming a national identity in which that was what it meant to be patriotic, was to accept these changes, accept error, and be excited about the future. Did you get a sense of what this party looks like

after Donald Trump? So much of the convention seemed just designed to flatter him and make him happy. But what does the party look like once he's gone? I think you saw three possible strains of that. So one is it looks like a Trump. After eight years of Obama and Biden's slow growth, Trump's policies have been like rocket fuel to the economy and especially to the middle class. So maybe Don Jr. runs. Biden has promised to take that money back out of your pocket and keep it in the swamp. That makes sense, though, considering Joe Biden is basically the Loch Ness Monster of the swamp.

Right. I think there's a real feeling that Don Jr. is a political heir apparent. On the other hand, the person Donald Trump put on primetime on the key night next to him is Ivanka. And there are rumors that she would like to run in the future as well. He is our commander-in-chief, champion of the American worker, defender of common sense,

and our voice for the forgotten men and women of this country. He is our president and my father, Donald J. Trump. Another version is that it is somebody who is a more traditional Republican, but who pledges fealty to Trump. That's what we saw with, say, Mike Pence or Tim Scott or Nikki Haley. President Trump and Vice President Pence have my support and America has our promise. We will build on the progress of our past and unlock the promise of our future. That future starts when the American people reelect President Donald Trump. And you saw what it's going to look

like as the Republican Party tries to synthesize the base's love of Donald Trump. He's still at 91% among Republicans with an effort to return to what the Republican Party was before Trump and for the most part still wants to be after him. You know, cut taxes on rich people, a somewhat more hawkish foreign policy. And then there are a couple people, Tom Cotton is probably the best example of this, but he's not the only one, who have been trying to articulate a post-Trump policy. It was surprisingly the guy named Josh Hawley, who's another member of the Senate, wasn't there. There are people who want to do what they feel Trump didn't do, which is take his impulses rhetorically and fashion them into a more thoroughgoing ideology. President Trump avenged the murder of hundreds of Americans by killing Iran's terrorist mastermind, Qasem Soleimani. Joe Biden sent pallets of cash to the Ayatollahs. President Trump ripped up the dangerous Iran nuclear deal.

So I thought you could see those three things happening at the convention in different ways. They're just like, there's the Trumps, there are Republicans willing to join the personality cult, but who just kind of want to be ideologically Republicans. And then there are the people floating around who want to fashion a post-Trumpism ideology that in some ways takes what Trump said more seriously than he himself ever did. Does that mean that there's hope that in four months or maybe four years, there's going to be an American politics that just isn't as divisive and constantly whiplash-inducing and damaging to the American psyche? Well, what Joe doesn't seem to understand... You know, as Mike Pence said...

...is that America is a nation of miracles. We're a nation of miracles, Sean. We can always hope. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Ezra. Thank you.